Blend if - Powerful Photoshop Tool Finally Explained Easily

let's talk about a blended option in Photoshop so let's start hey guys it's Nev - a couch and welcome to another really fun episode today I will explain you what a blend if it's and how to use it in Photoshop and blend if it's so powerful tool in Photoshop but unfortunately it's not so often lis used and I really hope that after this tutorial you will start to use it much often so without further ado let's jump straight into Photoshop and let's the fun begin alright guys today we will use few different images but we will start with this one and first thing what I like to do is to explain you the basic principles of bland Dave how to use it in general and later when you figure it out you can apply it on any image that you want so first I will create a new empty layer and I will name it gradient like so and I will use black and white colors here go to a gradient and choose the first one foreground to background press ok press and hold shift and just drag from a start to the end of the frame here and I will create really nice new gradient right the next step its to go to blend if options how to do that well basically we have two ways first its to go to a layer here then layer style blending options and the second one which I prefer it's just a double click on layer and we have this layer style dialog box with a lot of different layer styles here but we will deal only here with the blend if options right here now you have just blending modes the same you have here if you change it maybe to multiply it will change the x right here and so on and so on opacity and feel slider same as you have here and a few different options that we will not cover today today we will only concentrate on this portion here where it says blend if right and we have some drop-down menu where you can see we have gray red green and blue options gray it's basically stand for luminosity red green and blue are basically like red green and blue channels in Photoshop you'll deal with those three a little bit later let's start with the gray right that means that we are dealing with the luminosity only and we have two gradient bars with some sliders here both of them are representing the luminosity spectrum of certain layers the first one represent the luminosity spectrum of this layer it says this layer that means the layer that is selected the gradient layer and the second one it says underlying layer and represent the luminosity spectrum of the layer that it's underneath of the currently selected layer or luminosity spectrum of everything that it's visible on the screen when you turn off the first layer in this case the gradient layer right let's start with the first option here where it says this layer first let's reposition this a little bit like so and make this little bit smaller just to have everything visible in the screen that's nice and let's start with the first layer now the first layer it's completely visible in whole luminosity spectrum if we move for example the black slider a little bit to the right we will cut off some parts of the blacks and that layer will not be visible in the black part of the spectrum in the darkest tone of the spectrum let me show if I move this little bit to the right you will see that I will clip some blacks here some shadows here from an image and if I move this brighter slider to the left I will clip some highlights and that's really straightforward how this slider works it will clip some shadows it will Clips some highlights and we have another option really handy here when you press and hold alt or option key and move this slider you will separate this slider in two sliders and you will have really nice feather effect really nice transition between those all completely dark stones - a little bit brighter and then you can play with that because sometimes you don't want so harsh transition like it is now so it's same with the bright slider you will press alt or Frankie and just move it and you will have really nice transition right let's reset it and let's go to next slider here the second option it's just a little bit more complicated but we will figure it together as you can see here we basically have two different layers the gradient layer and the table there and the table layer now it's completely covered completely affected by this radiant layer in a whole spectrum range from completely dark to completely bright tones and that's the reason why we cannot see the table layer because it's completely affected by this gradient layer but what happens if we move some sliders if we narrow that luminosity spectrum let me show you that if I move for example this left side or a little bit to the right it will start to show some parts of underlying layer it would start to show the darkest part of underlying layer why because now the underlying layer it's still affected by a gradient layer but only in between those two sliders the darkest parts of underlying layer are not affected by a gradient layer and that's why we can see them right if we move this slider a little bit to the left the highlight will now start to see the highlights because now highlights are not affected by a gradient layer the gradient layer affects only parts of luminosity spectrum in between those two sliders in other words we are protecting the shadows by moving this slider and we are protecting the highlights by moving this slider and of course we can press alt or option key and separate that to have a little bit nicer and smoother transition and we'll have resolved like this only now only some mid-tones as you can see here are affected or covered by gradient layer the top layer right I hope that you understand now a little bit better what's this second slider are is doing right and let's cancel this and let me show you in the next example for example let's use the elevator image and the winter image here and if I double click on winter image again we have the same option here and the first slider it's affecting the current layer this layer and it's straightforward if I move this to the right I will only clip the darkest part the shadows and a little bit brighter parts of the winter layer and if I go with this slider to the left I will clip the brightest part snow here in snow on tree and that will not be visible right because now everything that it's in between those two sliders stay visible everything else it's disappeared right and that's really straightforward but what happens with this second slider if I move this slider to the right like so the shadow parts of the underlying layer starts to become visible because the winter layer it's not affecting them the winter layer now affects only in between those two sliders only parts that are in between those two sliders I move this a little bit to the left only the darkest parts of the elevator layer shows through so I'm protecting the shadows and now I'm protecting the highlights so highlights are seen through this layer because this layer it's not affecting the highlights and that's so easy we can just again press alt or option key and just feather this incision and we will have really nice effect all right I hope that now you have a little bit better understanding how the blend if sliders works now let me show you how that red green and blue options are affecting the image all right let's reveal the color spectrum layer here we have this color wheel and let's double click on it to go to blending options let's go from gray to red for example and we have some black to red gradients bars with the sliders if I move this slider a little bit to the left everything that contains red pigment in it will start to clipped will start to disappear and what happens if I move this slider where it's black color it will not clip the black part it will actually clip the opposite color in the spectrum wheel in this case cyan right it will clip everything that contains cyan in it so this is red this is a and if I go to green this is green right everything that contains green tint and opposite of green it's magenta so it will clip magenta and the same it's with blue it's blue and opposite it's yellow so it will clip and that's basically how those sliders works for example if I go back here to a gradient and a table and if I click to a gradient and go to a red and go down below to this layer it will start to show only the red parts of underlying layer everything that contains a red tint or here everything that contains a cyan teen because cyan it's opposite offering and that's that's the whole procedure really guys I really hope that now you have a little bit better understanding how to use the blend if and now let me show you some real-world examples right let's go to this table layer let's make it bigger and let's type some text here let's type maybe holiday why not and press ok I will move this text reposition it somewhere here and I want to achieve the effect that this text it's painted with a brush and a paint on the table not like it is now just pasted on the table when you use a brush and paint on the table because of table imperfections you will see some parts of the table through the text and we can achieve that maybe by lowering the opacity but it's not even close I can change the blending mode from normal to overlay it's not bad but it's not good a color I can change the soft light and maybe duplicate few times now it's a little bit better but this is not even close to what I want to achieve so let's undo a few times and here it's where the blend if options comes really really handy so let's double click on this there and let's zoom it a little bit like so and let's go to blend if what I like to do here is I want some parts of the table actually the darkest part of the table to be visible through the text or in other words I don't want the text to affect the darkest parts of the table so I will go to underlying layer because the table its underlying layer and I want to protect the shadows so let's move this to the right and then press alt or option key and just feather it a little bit and as you can see this is really really nice like I painted with with some brush and I does really nice imperfections the beauty of this is that if I press okay I can move this text reposition it and the effect will stay right here it's like as you can see I paint it with the brush but I see those holes in the table because the paint didn't cover those holes that's really really nice and again I can always double click on layer and reposition and change something here how much this will affect the background and so on and that's really really nice let's press ok and let me show you I'm not a really great trick here if I create a new layer and use white brush alright let's make a little bit bigger just paint over those branches here okay like so and let's paint here by not like so we don't need to be precise at all just paint it like this okay and now if we go to blend if double click on that and move protect the shadows here what what happens we made a snow on those branches because we protected the shadows so that white color it's not affecting the shadows and now we have impression that those branches are covered with the snow it's really nice and easy effect to achieve right let me show you another example let's go let's close this and go to a book image here for example you want to colorize this image but you want to make it a little bit cooler but you want to make only shadows a little bit cooler we can do that really easy with the blend if just create the curves adjustment layer and let's go to blues let's make this little bit more cooler let's reduce the red or add cyan and now we have really nice and beautiful cool shadows but as you can see the whole image it's a lot cooler and I don't want that I want only shadows to be cooled down so double click on curves and we have this blend if options so want to protect the highlights in this case of underlying layers so let's move this slider to the left and you can see the highlights started to disappear or this curves adjustment layer will not affect the highlights and then I will make this effect feather a little bit and make something like so as you can see if I press ok before and after before and after only highlight only shadows are covered with that blue color so we can do the opposite you can use curves and make things a little bit more warmer like so by adding the red and yellow right and I want to make only highlights warmer so I want to protect the shadows right and let's move this all the way here and then feather it a little bit and as you can see I only made highlights warmer and that's really nice nice and fast way how to colorize your image so let me show you another example for example I want to sharpen this image and I want to merge everything together which hit ctrl alt e' or shift command option key on a Mac let's make a new layer and I want to sharpen it so I will go to filter other High Pass and let's zoom it to see the details here it's too much around 1 or 1 point to maybe just predicts example and then I will change blending mode from normal to a linear light as you can see here this image it's a lot sharper maybe a lot more than it's supposed to be but for this example it's it's great and for example I want this sharp and if sharpening the effect to be applied only on the highlight so let's go double click on it and let's go to blend if options so I want to preserve the shadows what we need to do that's right preserve the shadows right here go to underlying layer and move this to the right and you can see how it starts to preserve the shadow so that this layer in this case sharpening layer will not affect shadows because we are preserving the shadow it will affect only the spectrum between those two sliders arrived and maybe we want to maybe we want to further this transition a little bit and if I press ok zoom it a little bit before and after only highlights are affected and here as you can see only highlights are affected shadows are not affected and that's a great way to sharpen your image it's the same if you want to reduce a noise from an image maybe you want to have noise in highlights but not in the shadows and opposite depends of your preference the blend if it's perfect and fastest way to do that right guys that's it for today I really hope that you liked this tutorial and that you learned something new from today's episode as you saw before the blend if it's really powerful tool in Photoshop and you can use it in a lot of different situations just practice experiment get used to use it and I really hope after this tutorial you will start to use it more often if you have any questions at all regarding to this episode please leave them in the comments below I will be glad to answer them if you like to support me to create even more interesting tutorials for you guys you can check my patreon page the link is down there in the description so have fun experiment and see you in a next fun tutorial bye bye

Channel: Nemanja Sekulic

Views: 140,968

Keywords: Blend if, Blendif, Photoshop, Tutorial, Blend if in photoshop, What is blend if, How to use blend if, How to use, Nemanja Sekulic, Blend-if, Blending, Tool, Easily, Finally Explained Easily, Easy explanation, Master blend if

Id: ypil2sfW3SI

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 23 2017